


Faulty

by demalore



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: BABY BILL CHEESE, Gen, Just Friends, Kid Bill, light blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-03-29 21:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3912040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demalore/pseuds/demalore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starting a new school wasn't easy, but Dipper and Mabel agreed that it would be worth it.  They had come to love Gravity Falls, quirks and all, and convinced their parents to let them stay.  Sure, it could get a little dangerous at times, but so could the rest of the world.  The only real threat had been Gideon, who had tried to steal the deed to the Mystery Shack single-handedly and failed.  While exciting, their summer had been free of serious problems.  There wasn't anything to worry about, right?<br/>Dipper was used to being the weirdest kid in school.  In Gravity Falls, this would no longer be the case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Partners

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of tumblr user obadeer's Kid Bill AU. Thank you and curse you ^-^

“ _Him_?” the twelve-year-old whispered loudly, his teeth tripping over his lower lip in exasperation.  “B-but that’s not fair!  My grades-”

“I am aware of Mr. Cipher’s...unusual tendencies,” Mr. Paalke muttered expressionlessly, taking a calm sip of his steaming cup of coffee.  He paused, letting the captivating taste dull his anxieties for a few moments longer.  If this brat thought he had it bad, he should try _teaching_ the little monster.  “But you have no special privilege, Mr. Pines.  He needs a partner for this project, and it may as well be you.”

“B-but I--” Dipper sputtered, desperately running through his amassed inventory of excuses for something to get him out of this.  Familiar mysterious handwriting came immediately to mind, weaknesses and escape maneuvers for countless terrifying beasts.  Alas, his biology teacher was not one of them.  His journal wouldn’t help him here.

“Fine,” he grumbled.  Retreating back to his own tight prison of wood and metal rods, Dipper could already feel the eyes latched on him.  He knew everyone had heard his discussion with Mr. Paalke, including _him_ , but at this point, did it really matter what he heard?  It wasn’t like it was going to make him go away.  The guy couldn’t take a hint.

The constant pressure of his gaze drew Dipper’s head like an untethered astronaut to a black hole.  Between pairs of freakishly long eyelashes were two wide eyes, devouring him entirely in their eerie roundness.  The broad white planks holding up his cheeks showed no sign of tiring--if anything, he seemed to be smiling harder, if that was even possible.

Dipper abandoned any attempt to be polite, outright staring at the kid, sitting a few desks ahead of him to the right.  He was used to it now--everyone was--but it seemed worse knowing that he would have to work with this kid.  He had seen some creepy things in his relatively short life, but this one topped the charts.

“Hey, partner!” Bill exclaimed, his voice obnoxiously cutting through the background classroom chatter.  A few people stared at the strange boy, but most were numb to it.  Most of them now stared at Dipper.

 _It’ll be over in a week_ , Dipper thought consolingly to himself, hiding his face from his peers.  Of all people, why had _he_ been the one to be dragged into it?  He had no qualms when it came to the paranormal, but teasing wasn’t something he could fix with spells or incantations.  First his birthmark, then the journal, and now _this_.  Just great.

~

A cheap plastic tray clattered next to him, having fallen from over two feet above the table.  The table was empty apart from Dipper, so he was the only one struck by splatters of the warm mystery meat and mashed potatoes.  Dipper wiped a white blob from his cheek, flicking it carelessly at the empty space in front of him.

“Partner!” the horrendous voice barked.  Unwashed limbs squirmed into the space next to Dipper, as though the lunch table was some kind of puzzle cube.  After a short period of struggling to sit down, Bill scooted next to his unwilling victim, who silently moved his tray further down the table.  Even though there was no one else sitting there, it suddenly felt extremely crowded.

“So what are we doing for our project, huh?”  Bill hauled a fork dripping with gravy to his unhinged jaw, stuffing his grinning maw with the cafeteria food like it was the greatest thing he had ever tasted.  Dipper tried hard not to notice the excess mush freely flowing over Bill’s lips, which were cracked and bloody from his constant smiling.  Even as he stuffed himself, Bill continued to stare at Dipper, causing his fork to occasionally strike his cheek before landing successfully in his mouth.

Ignoring the mess, Dipper looked back at his own unappetizing food.  “I...I can just do it myself, Bill.”  With a grimace, he forced a small forkful of the nameless meat into his mouth.  As he chewed the weirdly spongy excuse for nourishment, he wondered how Bill could stomach this stuff.  “You don’t need to worry about it.”  He’d take extra work over working with this kid any day.

Bill’s enthusiastic eating came to an abrupt stop.  His fork, tilted sideways, fell from his white-knuckled fist, slopping into the potato-meat mess.  There were now more potatoes smeared on the table than on his tray.

“Ok!” he said, the smile gone but his voice still loud with its usual cheerfulness.  Dipper watched him leave the cafeteria for wherever weird kids went, leaving the crippled remnants of his lunch at the table.  Dipper was able to eat quietly by himself with Bill gone, but the abandoned tray remained a nagging reminder.

~

Dipper was beginning to regret what he had told Bill.  Not because he felt bad, he reminded himself as he opened his locker, but because he really didn’t want to do the project alone.  It would cut majorly into his monster-hunting time, and his grades were bad enough as it was.  He hefted his Biology textbook out of the narrow metal cubicle, grunting with the effort.  Still, if he did the project himself, he had a decent chance of getting a--

“Hey, Partner!!”  Bill announced, slamming Dipper’s locker shut without warning.  With a girlish yelp, Dipper stumbled away, protectively holding the hand Bill had almost amputated.   _How perfect would_ that _have been.  The only thing that could make me weirder_ now _would be missing a hand._  Bill didn’t seem to notice Dipper’s panic, continuing to grin as though all was right with the world.

“So do you have an idea for our project yet?”  As he spoke, Bill wrung his arms in front of him, hands clasped together, twisting them like he was trying to snap the appendages off.  Dipper could almost hear the bones in his arms threatening to break.

“I already told you, I’ll do it myself!” Dipper yelled.  He rose to his feet, slapping Bill’s arms away as he did so.  He didn’t care that there were still dozens of other kids in the hallway, watching him; it didn’t matter what they thought anymore.  He would take being alone forever over being stuck with this...this _psycho_.

Bill stopped, unwinding his arms and laying them peaceably at his sides.  A red mark, courtesy of Dipper, was already beginning to blush on his left arm.  The open-mouth smile remained, but it had shrunken, now uncertain and wavering.  His eyes, though they remained inhumanly wide, no longer seemed to stare.

“Th...that was today?”  Bill asked, the right side of his mouth twitching a bit, drawing out the last syllable of the word.

At a second’s notice, Bill became jittery, eyes darting between each spectating face in the hallway.  By now, a circle of space surrounding him and Dipper, separating them from the _normal_ kids.  If Bill hadn’t noticed it before, he did now.

His mouth moved as though preparing to say something, but Bill remained silent.  Torn between two alternatives, Bill stepped anxiously away and back again, his hands outreached, fingers splayed.  Finally, he settled on trying to reopen Dipper’s locker.  The circular lock whirled under his shaking fingers, landing precisely on the numbers he envisioned, but the door refused to open.  His eyes squinting in frustration, Bill gave up on the task, instead giving the uncooperative slab of metal a kick that nearly sent his small child body to the floor.  With an animal-like shriek, Bill rolled onto all fours and ran for the door at the end of the hall, only rising onto two feet to operate the handle.

“Freak show,” someone in the crowd spat.  Dipper stared after Bill, rubbing the hand he had slapped him with.  Only after the crowd dispersed did Dipper get to work on reopening his locker.  It took him considerably more tries than usual, his mind somewhere else entirely.

~

“Hey, brosef!” Mabel smacked through a bowl of after-school cereal.  While Dipper had intentionally taken the long way home, he knew she had come home as soon as possible.  With another sugary spoonful disappeared behind her braces, she continued, “”ow’s er dayat skoo?”

“Fine, I guess,” Dipper answered, trying to hide the underlying tones of uncertainty in his voice.  It had been anything but fine, but he didn’t need Mabel thinking something was wrong.  She’d just think he had a crush or something.

“We still going on a monster hunt tonight?” Mabel asked hopefully, looking away from the television for a second.  The voice of the announcer from Baby Fights could be heard echoing from the crackly speakers, falling on deaf ears.

“Can’t, I have homework,” Dipper answered, picking his deflated backpack up and moving slowly toward the stairs.

“Aw, Dipper!  Why don’t you have some _fun_ for once?” Mabel whined, standing up to pull Dipper back.  Instead of brushing her away, Dipper stood still, paralyzed by her touch.  He didn’t turn around, for fear he would see that nightmarish smile.

After an awkward few seconds, Mabel let go of Dipper, frowning as she settled back onto the floor in front of the television.  As he continued on to their bedroom, she called after him, “It wouldn’t hurt to loosen up a little, Dip!  Forget that homework, why don’t you make some friends or something?”

Dipper mounted the stairs quickly, seeking the relief of the attic’s closed door.  As he reached the room, he realized how light his backpack was.  With everything that had happened, he had forgotten the textbook.   _Now_ how was he going to--

He froze in the doorway, backpack hanging precariously off his shoulder.  The textbook was placed neatly on his bed, as well as everything that had been on his bedroom floor.  Even the piece of gum that Mabel had gotten hopelessly stuck between the floorboards was now resting comfortably on his covers.  Upon further inspection, there was a small piece of paper sticking out of the textbook: “CLEAN”.  The window above his bed was slightly ajar.

_As good an apology as any_ , Dipper thought, looking out the window but knowing he wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.  At least, nothing out of the Gravity Falls ordinary.  Sure enough, there weren’t any flying, grinning kids outside.  At least, none that he could see.


	2. Voices

It was a match made in heaven, everyone in first hour biology thought.  The “paranormal expert” and the kid who was anything but normal.  With any luck, Dipper would end up capturing the maniac, thinking he was a witch or a gnome or something.  After all, the self-declared monster hunter had done it before.

To his classmates’ disappointment, Dipper didn’t come to school that day armed with any of his monster-hunting equipment; no net, no ectoplasm-detector, no cinnamon.  Even the weird journal he sometimes carried was now replaced by his utterly mundane Biology textbook.

Upon entering the classroom, Dipper’s eyes immediately darted to the wild tuft of white-blonde hair in the middle of the classroom.  He had been bracing himself for Bill’s signature grin, and found himself donning his own sorry excuse for a smile in return.  But as Dipper passed by Bill’s desk, he froze halfway down the aisle, looking curiously at the weird little kid.

The grin had been creepy, but its absence was somehow far worse.  After being stretched for hours on end, his cheeks now seemed to sag, reaching down to the desk his head was resting on.  Instead of sitting straight at attention, ready to leap up at a moment’s notice, Bill was now slumped, arms folded right in front of his nose.  Dipper checked the space below his mangled bangs, wondering if Bill was just asleep, but no, he was awake.  His eyes were mere slits, shrouded in drooped eyelashes, but unmistakably open.

Knowing his second’s pause was already treacherously conspicuous, Dipper hurried to his seat at the back of the class.  The glamour of yesterday’s little episode was already gone, leaving him once again as just another friendless freak.  Apart from a few smirking glances, Dipper was left alone.  He normally enjoyed the lack of distraction, but it almost felt lonely today.  At least he would be able to concentrate...no, that was a lie.  Try as he could to open his textbook to the correct page and focus on mammals or whatever, his gaze kept drifting to Bill.  He hadn’t moved for the past minute.   _Must be a new record._

Mr. Paalke’s entrance sharply cut off all murmured conversation.  The caffeine-fueled adult gave the class a quick once-over, shooting a toothy grin at the gloomy Bill.  It was a pleasant reversal of the way things usually went--perhaps today he’d be able to focus on teaching, undistracted by the child’s inhuman stare.  The day was off to a great start.

“We’ll be working on our projects today, class!  Make the most of your time, as they’ll be due by the end of the week!”  Before he even had a chance to sit down, students began moving the desks to accommodate their groups.  The sound of rustling paper nearly matched the volume of eager chatting, easily filling the only two spots of silence in the room.

Dipper waited tensely in his chair, feeling the seconds drip by.  He _did_ say that he would do the project himself, but the task seemed even more daunting now that he was surrounded by people working in functional pairs.  They all knew that he had been partnered up with Bill, so could anyone really blame him for working alone?   _Yes_ , he answered himself, seeing Mr. Paalke glance up from his desk to glare at the two single boys.

“Come on, you two,” the teacher broadcasted to the entire class, looking straight at Dipper.  “This is supposed to be a _partner_ project, so get moving!”

Rolling his eyes, Dipper lugged himself and his textbook out of his desk.  Everyone had already moved their desks away from Bill, leaving a single empty seat, clearly designated for Dipper.  He tried to act natural as he claimed the desk, flipping through the textbook to avoid eye contact with Bill.

“So I thought we’d....” Dipper’s voice died away, strangled by Bill’s enduring apathy.  Slamming the cover shut, he demanded, “What the heck is wrong with you?”

Apparently startled by Dipper’s outburst, Bill drew a shaky, disjointed breath.  The light behind his eyes relit, bringing his spine back to a painful straightness, his eyes fixed straight ahead.  “Wrong?  No!  Project, let’s just...do the project!”

He slammed his hands on the desk, nearly knocking his textbook onto the floor.  As Dipper watched, more amused than anything, Bill ripped the textbook open, holding two individual pages tightly in his fists.  From the movement of his elliptical pupils, he seemed to be speed-reading the page.

Dipper squinted, reading the upside-down text.  He recognized the page--it was from last week’s unit--and impulsively reached to change it.  Bill jerked his hands away from Dipper’s, arms poised muskrat-style, as Dipper gently turned the pages to the correct unit.  When the page-turning stopped, Bill’s hands slowly settled back on the textbook, methodically crumpling the open pages.  The grin had returned, its usual intensity only slightly dimmed.

“There we go,” Dipper nodded approvingly.

~

“Fine, just _promise_ me you won’t go all boy-crazy over him.  We really have to work on our project.”

“Oh, _I_ promise!”  Mabel agreed in a singsong voice, swaying her hips tauntingly.  She beamed at her brother, giving him her widest puppy-dog eyes.  A halo seemed likely to appear above her twin hair-sprigs at any moment.

Dipper sighed defeatedly, reflexively rubbing the bridge of his nose.  Inviting Bill over had been a gamble in of itself, and he really didn’t need Mabel getting in the way.  The worst thing was that he didn’t know what to expect; she could be anything from overly affectionate to...well, not so affectionate.  Everyone in his class saw Bill as a freak, so why shouldn’t Mabel?  Still, maybe total disinterest wasn’t the worst alternative.  Mabel and Bill...Dipper grimaced at the thought.

Dipper kept watch by the kitchen window, scanning the road for any sign of Bill.  Mabel pretended to be busy rearranging the pots and pans, but he could tell she was just stalling.  Was him having someone over really such an occasion?  Maybe he _did_ need some friends.

A heavy _thunk_ resonated from the floor above them, sending small bits of ceiling onto the kitchen table.  Immediately shifting her attention to the noise, Mabel abandoned her busy work and dashed for the pantry.  “Pro’lly just another possum.  I’ll get it!” She pulled out a broom and held it triumphantly, like a warrior before a battle.  After making a few swipes at Dipper with the deadly weapon, she whipped around and began to march toward the stairs.

Dipper watched her, entertained for a few moments before the realization hit him.  “Wh-why don’t I take care of it?” he offered, rushing to intercept Mabel before she could reach the bottom step.  “You should stay here, and...and wait for the guy, you know?”  He tried to smile naturally at Mabel, arm outstretched to take the broom.

She wasn’t buying it.  With a huff, she thrust the broom into Dipper’s chest, sending him falling onto the splintered wooden stairs.  “Fine.  But if it’s a monster, _promise_ you won’t try to dissect it or anything.”

“I-I promise!” Dipper agreed quickly, shaking his head furiously up and down.  He ran up to the room before Mabel could change her mind, toting the broom behind him.  Only opening the door enough to squeeze in, he maneuvered in quickly to prevent Mabel from peeking.  He waited until he had safely closed the door behind him to turn around.

“Welcome to your room, Dipper!”  Bill said cheerfully.  One of Dipper’s shirts had already been squeezed onto Bill’s torso, with a pair of shorts not far behind.  As he struggled to fit his head through a leg-hole, Bill collapsed onto the floor with another loud _thunk_.  Without half a second’s rest, Bill began clawing frenziedly at the narrow space under Dipper’s bed, his tongue clamped between his teeth in concentration.

“Ok, yeah, _no_ ,” Dipper said authoritatively, pulling Bill by his legs from his chosen cranny.  Bill obliged, turning to face Dipper and making a noticeable effort to sit still.  His eyes continued to drink in the room, letting no small detail escape their omniscience.

“Look, if this is going to work, you need to do less of...that,” Dipper tried to say gently.  Every time Bill turned to feast his eyes on a different wonder of the small room, Dipper instinctively leaned forward, prepared to stop him if he went completely crazy.

“Less of...”  Bill repeated mindlessly, crossing and uncrossing his legs hyperactively.  As his head spun from one corner of the room to the other, it froze on Dipper.  Bill tilted his head, his smile still there, but with a look of concern in his eyes.  “What?” he finished softly, his teeth now hidden by a small, puckered line.

Bill pivoted onto all fours, grinding his thin knees into the floor.  As he crept closer, Dipper leaned back, bracing himself against whatever Bill was going to do.  He tried to remain still, irrationally believing that what was said to work on dinosaurs would work on Bill.   _Maybe if I don’t move, he won’t be able to see me..._

Unaffected by Dipper’s failed attempt at hiding, Bill held out a single hand, tentatively touching Dipper’s left cheek as though it might not be real.  Dipper flinched against the touch, but remained where he was.  The concern in Bill’s eyes was now laced with fear.

“Did _I_ do that?” Bill asked, addressing no one but himself.  His fingernails scraped Dipper’s unharmed face as he moved his hand, feeling for marks that weren’t there.  He was looking at Dipper, but at the same time, simply staring into nothingness.

“Bill?  What’s wrong?”  Dipper questioned worriedly.  He took Bill’s hand in his own, putting a stop to the creepy stroking.  Bill didn’t seem to notice, his eyes still cloudy, far away from the attic bedroom.  Dipper searched his eyes for any sign of acknowledgement, but found none.  His wide eyes were empty.

“Bill, snap out of it!” Dipper cried, squeezing his hand tightly.  It felt cold and stiff, like the hand of a corpse.  Bill blinked, his lashes meeting for a slow second, and his eyes focused onto Dipper.  Once again, Bill’s light came back, easily extinguishing the darkness that had moments before been engulfing him.

“Oh, I’m sorry!”  Bill grinned, loudly smacking his tongue against his teeth.  Jerking his hand from Dipper’s, he stuck a thumb in his mouth and began to suck--no-- _c_ _hew_ on it.  Dipper shuddered, nearly feeling the merciless grinding of Bill’s blunt teeth on his own hand.  “So are we going to work on the project now, partner?” Bill asked amiably through a mouth full of thumb.

“No! I...”  Dipper fought for the words, flustered by Bill’s capricious change in mood.  Normally he would be nothing more than a little put off by his characteristic weirdness, but now it just seemed like a lie, a cheap facade.  This wasn’t something he could ignore.

“Come on, tell me what’s wrong.”

Once again, Bill looked intently at Dipper.  His smile faded to the size of a normal person’s, making it seem relatively nonexistent.  Even though he had the energy of a toddler on a sugar high, Dipper noticed dark bags under his enormous eyes.

“Shut up!” Bill snipped chipperly, baring his teeth for a lighthearted second before hiding them again.  Dipper narrowed his eyes, not sure whether to be offended or not.  Bill raised his left hand, palm parallel with the ceiling, and smacked it onto Dipper’s forehead.  Dipper jerked his head away at the sudden sting of pain, but Bill’s fingers had already grasped his tangled bangs, locking his head in place.

“Bill, what are you-” Dipper began, the last word hopelessly caught in his throat.  He realized he couldn’t hear what he was saying above the onslaught of blaring sound, which seemed to come from just inside his ears.  Hundreds of threads of barely comprehensible speech raced around his brain, each changing before he could pick it out.  Familiar voices, most notably Mabel and himself, were mixed with those of total strangers.  Along with the carefree conversations between Dipper and his sister were unfamiliar cries and foreign chants.  If not for the fact that he could still faintly hear the silence of his bedroom, he wouldn’t have believed that the voices were all in his head.

After what felt like longer than just a minute or so, Bill’s cold hand slowly lifted away from Dipper’s warm, throbbing forehead.  The voices inside Dipper’s head drifted away, the crowd of strangers retreating back into the silent void.  Bill was once again grinning, with the bright eyes to match.  He was leaning side to side where he sat, and Dipper found the hyper motion more reassuring than stillness.   _Back to normal...I guess..._

“Is that...are those voices...real?”  Dipper asked, touching his hand to his forehead.  The throbbing was gone, but he thought he could still hear echoes of the invisible masses, trespassing onto his own inner thoughts.

Bill shrugged, pulling his knees to his chest as he rocked.  He wrapped his hands around his legs, betraying his swollen red thumb.  “Don’t know!” he answered, happily looking around the room again, grinning at nothing.   _No, not nothing_ , Dipper corrected himself, _just...not something I can sense._

Suddenly entranced by the Biology textbook, Bill leaned over to crack it open.  He turned the pages slowly, intent on finding the correct page himself.  After a few unsuccessful page-turns, he plopped onto his stomach, still looking carefully through the book, eyes squinched in concentration.

Dipper sat next to him, glancing at the page number of Bill’s book.  It was closer than his last guess had been, but Bill was turning the pages in the wrong direction, taking him farther away from his goal.  Not that it really seemed to matter right now.  “They’re...probably not real, you know,” Dipper said, matter-of-factly, casually crossing his arms and looking away.

Bill glanced up.  Every single one of his teeth was now visible, as Dipper had grown used to.  “Ok!” he agreed with a neck-breaking nod, nearly face-planting into the open book.  Bill continued looking through the pages, happily ignoring the collective outcries of people from other times, places, and possibly realities that filled the space in his head.  There weren’t any more waking nightmares to obscure the textbook pages.  Even the faint sound of Dipper’s primal screaming, which had been plaguing Bill since that morning, was now tolerable.

~

“Your friend never showed up,” Mabel observed, tugging a comb through her thick head of hair.  The room was already dark, the sun having retired hours ago, but Dipper could still feel Mabel watching him as he entered the room.

“Yeah,” Dipper agreed monotonously, putting the Biology textbook away and taking out the familiar journal.  After all that had happened that day, the least of which being working on the science project, he needed something to calm his nerves.  It wasn’t exactly light reading, but it would do.

“So did you get that possum?” Mabel asked discarding the brush and squirming under her covers.

Dipper took a few seconds to formulate his answer.  “Yeah, uh, there wasn’t a possum or anything.  Must’ve just been the building, being old and stuff.”

Mabel yawned, apparently too tired to be really suspicious.  “No monsters?  You promise?”

Dipper recalled the faded whites of Bill’s eyes, the disappearance of his telltale grin, the cold skin against his own...

“Yeah, Mabel, I promise,” he said, flicking on his reading light.  “No monsters.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Criticism is super appreciated!


	3. Bruises

The way to school seemed twice as long today, probably because he was carrying twice as much weight.  He didn’t blame Bill for forgetting his textbook, but that didn’t stop Dipper from cursing the wide-eyed freak with every laborious step.  Dipper’s pace ground to a near halt; he could’ve sworn someone had put boulders in his backpack.

Luckily, the halls were nearly empty by the time he arrived at school, the all-powerful first period bell threatening to ring at any moment.  Stopping by his locker was no longer an option, he’d have to suffer through first period with his ten-ton backpack and no pencil.   _Mr. Paalke’s just going to looove that.._

The shrill bell sounded moments after Dipper burst into the classroom, angry that it had failed to best him.  Everyone else was already sitting uniformly in their seats, except for Bill, who was standing in his.  He flapped his hand erratically in the air, causing a few nearby students to duck.  “Hey, Partner!”  he yelled, his voice booming through the empty classroom.

Dipper raised his eyebrows, laughing good-naturedly at Bill.  As he half-heartedly waved back, he caught a few people snickering at the display, whispering what he could only assume weren’t compliments.  Dipper’s eye twitched slightly as a needle of anger inched through him.  He saw Bill’s full, innocent eyes, knowing they saw things that were anything but innocent.  Dipper cursed how blind the rest of them were.  How blind _he_ had been just a few days ago, taking Bill as nothing but an annoying creep.

“Well, now that Mr. Pines has so graciously decided to join us,” Mr. Paalke purred, joining in the collective ridicule, “why don’t we continue on our projects?  Remember, they’re due tomorrow!”  He seemed to be looking forward to the approaching deadline, watching his students begin to panic with absolute relish.  Dipper just rolled his eyes as he went to his desk.   _He thinks he’s so smart..._

Bill came to Dipper before he had a chance to shrug off his backpack.  “Hey, Partner!” he repeated in case Dipper hadn’t heard him the first time, “Are we still working on the project tonight?”

“Yeah, we still need to finish the display,” Dipper answered, pulling one of his textbooks onto his desk with no small amount of struggle.  Bill watched contentedly, drumming his fingers forcefully on the wooden surface.  The random taps grew into steady beats and melodies, and Dipper could faintly hear Bill humming along to his own percussion.  The continued disruptance began to draw attention.  An excuse to stare at the weird kid beat working on the science project hands down.  Mr. Paalke simply drank in the rising conflict, taking a slow sip of his coffee.

“Hey Dip-Stick,” a heavier-set boy named Trevor chortled, “why don’t you control your little pet?  Some of us sane people are trying to work on science.  You know, that thing you keep telling us is just a government hoax?”

Dipper felt his cheeks flare red.  He could already feel the desk becoming sticky with his sweat.  Admittedly, that conspiracy of his didn’t really seem valid in a science classroom, especially one he was voluntarily taking part in.  But he couldn’t say that now, they’d only be laughed at more.  He sputtered, “Yeah, well, see, the lizard people--”

“You fail this project,” Bill declared, staring straight at Trevor as he continued to drum.  Far from stopping, his improvised song only seemed to grow louder.  The classroom murmurs drowned out most of what Bill had said, but the recognition on Trevor’s greasy face was undeniable.  He had heard Bill loud and clear.

“And your dad’s gonna be _maaad_ ,” Bill finished, giving his desk a few good slaps for emphasis.  He grinned, waiting patiently for Trevor’s response.  Dipper could only gawk, feeling his heart race even faster.  The teasing had been bad enough, but there was no telling what weight Bill’s words held over Trevor or what this would mean for him.

Not having heard Bill’s little prophecy over the ruckus, Mr. Paalke indifferently called out, “Settle down, class, settle down,” enjoying this more than he would care to admit.  Bill had been a ticking time bomb from the moment he had started attending the school, and Mr Pallke would be darned if he wasn’t going to savor his detonation.

“What....did you say?” Trevor questioned, lifting his considerable weight from his desk.  He snarled, undaunted by Bill’s full grin.  By that point, everyone had assumed Bill had a screw loose or something.  No one could possibly be that happy all the time, so he had to be a moron.  But considering what Bill had just said, Trevor was starting to doubt that theory.

“Fail!  You fail, that’s what I said,” Bill clarified conversationally, taking care to emphasize his words so Trevor could hear them loud and clear.  Dipper flinched each time he said “fail”, each time imagining a new, horrible death that would surely result. _No, this isn’t happening...Bill, don’t--_

“You really are stupid,” Trevor growled, inching dangerously close to them.  Mr. Paalke set down his coffee, feeling satisfied with himself.  Finally, the other shoe would drop, and he could get rid of the little menace.  Maybe that Pines, kid, too.  At this point, he assured himself, intervening would only be delaying the inevitable, so he had nothing to worry about.  As he rose from his desk, the bystander students knowingly moved aside, allowing him easy access to the dispute boiling at the back of class.

“Break it up, you two,” Mr. Pallke muttered, just loud enough for Trevor to hear.  Trevor stopped whatever he had been planning on doing, but hatred still burned in his eyes.  With no acknowledgement to his teacher, he retreated back to his seat, signaling the other students to follow suit.  Bill’s one-man symphony had come to an end, and he was back to pursuing his Biology textbook as if nothing had ever happened.

He jabbed his right pointer finger at a detailed picture of a wasp.  “I am painting this for the display,” he decided, nodding at Dipper, who was still overcoming the shock.

School had never been easy for Dipper, and there was no excuse for it to be easier here just because the monsters he talked about were literally right outside.  His only hope had been to avoid drawing too much attention, no matter what people said about him.  All it had taken was a few inopportune words out of Bill’s big mouth to ruin his chance at an incident-free school year.

~

“You are sad.”

“I’m not _sad_ ,” Dipper grumbled, scraping his lunch tray down the food line.  The anxiety churning in his guts had already put a dent in his appetite, but the look of the glop being flung onto his tray wasn’t helping.  Bill didn’t seem to mind, it, though, shouting a “Thank you!” to each of the lunch ladies in turn.

“I’m just....worried,” Dipper explained, waiting for Bill to get through the line before claiming a table.  He felt the need to check every few seconds to make sure Bill wasn’t wandering off to cause more trouble with Trevor.  Dipper almost felt like a mother duck, except that his duckling had indefinite magical abilities instead of common sense.  “Maybe you don’t care what other people think, but I can’t live like this.  Not again.”

“And this makes you sad,” Bill said conclusively, sticking his spoon into the various foods on his tray, deciding what to eat first.

“N-no!  I already said--” Dipper gave up, transfixed by the swirling ooze Bill was concocting.  As if it wasn’t vile enough as it was, the combination of carrots, pineapple, and chocolate milk was literally making him feel sick.  Maybe this was just another thing he had to accept: even if they had their similarities, he and Bill would never really understand each other.

He sighed--what was done was done, and after this project, he’d just have to get back to work on climbing back into his hole of social oblivion, where no one could hurt him.  Sure, he liked Bill and all, but it was quickly becoming more than he could handle.  Voices from other realities?  Fine.  School bullies?  Not so much.

“Hey,” Bill clipped, meditatively petting the orange-brown mush.  With his head turned to Dipper’s, he slowly stated, “Nothing is gonna happen.”  He tapped his forehead importantly with the dirty end of his spoon, letting a squashed chunk of pineapple slide down his nose.

Dipper watched obediently, picking up the seriousness in Bill’s otherwise ridiculous gesture.   _If the voices_ were _real, and not just my imagination...can I trust him?_

Bill had started scooping more pineapple onto his face, giggling as each piece left sticky yellow streaks down his cheeks.  He was laughing obnoxiously loud at the crude game, but while other people wrote it off as craziness, Dipper could only wonder what Bill was trying to block out.

~

The rest of the school day went by smoothly.  Dipper didn’t catch so much as a peek of Trevor’s acne-blossomed face, which in itself was a huge blessing.  That kid was a loose cannon, but certainly not the brightest.  Maybe’d he’d just let the grudge drop.  By the time the final bell rang, setting Dipper free from the public education system for the rest of the day, Bill’s assurance seemed more and more credible.  Dipper had his backpack crammed and locker shut in record time, already looking forward to a quiet night at the Shack.

Before he had taken more than a few steps from his locker, he moaned, feeling the familiar burden of Bill’s textbook still in his backpack.  His legs twinged in protest, refusing to take the dead weight on another mile-long trip.  The subdued fear that Trevor would come after him returned with a vengeance, reminding him that the extra book would render him unable to run.

He glanced hopefully at the clock--it had only been about four minutes since the bell had rung.  Bill might still be around, and he could give the textbook back. _Not that the weight would bother him_ , Dipper reasoned with himself, _he doesn’t have to walk_.  Thankfully, the school, like the town of Gravity Falls itself, wasn’t very large.  Dipper was able to scour the hallways in no time at all, but there was no sign of Bill.

Bolting through the front doors, Dipper looked around the parking lot, even glancing hopefully in the sky, but still nothing.  He was already beginning to perspire from running around while carrying the two textbooks, and felt even more determined to find Bill.   _He can’t have already gone to the Shack, he has to still be here!_

In one last-ditch attempt, Dipper crossed to the back of the school by the dumpsters.  It was a place people usually avoided, but that just made it seem a more likely place for Bill to be.  Hearing a voice, Dipper began to grin through his raspy breaths, but his blood chilled once he recognized who it was.  

“I don’t know how you found out, you white-haired freak, but whatever you did, you’re going to pay for it.”

“Yeah, OK!”  Bill’s voice answered agreeably.  Dipper came around the corner just in time to see Bill nodding zealously to Trevor.  He was also hopping from one leg to another, spinning his foot in circles before switching to the next.  It looked like some kind of dance, and needless to say, Trevor was not impressed.

Seeing Trevor pull back a chubby, but still threatening, fist, Dipper ran forward without hesitation, the soreness in his legs just a foggy memory.  His heart had begun to race again, but instead of being aware of his sweaty, trembling palms, he felt his fingers tighten together defiantly.  Dipper rushed past Bill, aiming his gently-used fist at the target of his hatred.

The rush of adrenaline was utterly wasted.  Dipper was struck down before he knew what happened, throwing the ill-timed punch only after his head landed squarely in the dirt.  All he could feel was a sharp sting in his left cheek, and then it, too, was smothered in a fuzzy black blanket.  Bill‘s mouth gaped open, seeing Dipper as if he were a ghost.  Unable to act, Bill started to tremble, his eyes shaking wildly in their sockets.

“Looks like your little friend came to save you,” Trevor leered smugly.  He towered over Dipper, almost hoping the nerd would try to get back up to give him an excuse to kick him back down.  “Now isn’t that just the sweetest thing?”

“Not the deal,” Bill whispered grimly.  His legs were now rooted where they stood, his own hands curling up to match Trevor’s.  “He wasn’t part of the deal.”

“He _became_ part of the deal,” Trevor countered haughtily, sarcastically drawing out the word ‘deal’.  “I’m sick of seeing your ugly mugs around school.  Either you leave, or I _make_ you leave.”

Bill took one step forward, his hands unclenched.  He grinned joylessly, just to spite Trevor to the very end.  Dipper heard Bill, faintly as if through a brick wall, just before passing out completely:

“OK.”

~

Dipper dreaded going back home.  He knew that every step brought him closer to one of his grunkle’s lectures on toughening up and a night of being Dr. Mabel’s patient.  Bill followed, walking next to him on the abandoned sidewalk.  It couldn’t have been more than an hour since school let out, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

They walked in silence, each carrying a Biology textbook.  Bill held his out at arm’s length, keeping it off his bloodstained shirt.  Every time Dipper felt like offering to carry it, the newly-banded duet of his aching legs and pounding head refused to comply, leaving him speechless.  Bill never so much as lowered the book, and showed no indication of wanting Dipper’s help.

“You’re a liar,” Dipper finally said, not hiding the betrayal he felt.  All he could remember was seeing Bill and Trevor behind the school, and now...and now they were both injured, all because Bill had to go and run his mouth.  Even though he knew what would happen.

Dipper’s conviction made Bill wince.  “Yes,” he replied with none of his usual gusto.  Dipper had a thick gash in his cheek, but Bill undoubtedly had it worse.  His face was lumpy with bruises and welts, preventing any smiling.  Bill had used his shirt to wipe off the blood, but a cut above his right eye was still gradually oozing.  Even as he dabbed at his injury-ridden face, Bill remained stoic, unflinching.  Swallowing a mixture of blood and spit, he inquired carefully, “You are mad?”

“No, ‘course not,” Dipper answered without thinking, knowing it wasn’t true.  He bitterly remembered Bill’s assurance that ‘everything would be fine’, how he had smiled so innocently.  What if the whole charade was a lie?  Could he really just be the creep everyone thought he was?

Bill’s battered head turned to face the ground.  “OK.”  They arrived at the Shack.  Bill continued on toward the woods without another word, and Dipper stepped into the welcoming light of the gift shop.

It almost felt like a practiced routine now: Mabel and Stan’s initial shock, a long-winded reprimand, a little fussing over.  Dipper didn’t know how they could tell it had been a bully and not some magical whatsit (as Stan referred to it), but they knew immediately.  He didn’t try to deny it.

“That’s a nice cut you got there, bro-bro,” Mabel said, daring to smile now that they were alone in the bedroom.  “We should bandage that sucker up.”

Dipper got his journal out angrily, needing a distraction from all the emotion-charged thoughts compiling in his head.  The lying, the inevitable torment, it was too much to bear.  The hollow in his chest hurt much more than the cut on his cheek.

Mabel reached over, bandages in hand, and tentatively poked Dipper’s injury.  Dipper flinched away at her touch, which had reminded him too much of Bill.

 _Bill..._  It had been just last night, hadn’t it?  The voice, normally so confident and carefree, whispering, _Did_ I _do that?_  That weird stroking, feeling a wound that wasn’t yet there...

The journal fell lifelessly onto Dipper’s lap, his hands frozen and useless.  He gripped the edge of his bed, vertigo crawling from his newly-cleared mind down to his roiling stomach.  Mabel took his shoulder to steady him, keeping her brother from toppling onto the floor.

“Maybe you should get some sleep, Dip.”  She eased Dipper into bed, just like a mother would, and put out the light.  A few dying rays of sunlight still crept in through the window, making sleep unlikely for at least another hour.  Still, Mabel went into her own bed, readily sharing in the unpleasantness of an early bedtime.  She knew she wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the rest of the night, knowing Dipper was up here, alone and hurt.  She felt safer, knowing they could watch over each other, guarding against the things that went bump in the night.

 _I have to find him_ , Dipper thought, turning to face the wall.  He pulled the blankets tighter, even though he felt a layer of sweat building between him and his clothing.  Imagining Bill by himself in the forest made him restless, but he resisted the urge to kick against the smothering covers.  Mabel was still awake, and there was no way she would let him leave.

The rectangle of light on their floor stretched lazily across the room, fading with agonizing idleness.  Dipper convinced himself that Mabel’s breathing had finally slowed enough for her to be safely asleep, and carefully extracted himself from his bed.  The traitorous floorboards creaked against his escape attempt, but his sister didn’t stir.  He wrapped his hand around the doorknob, one finger at a time, and began to ease the door open..

“Where are you going, Dipper?”  He heard her fling the blankets aside.  The light flicked on, forcing him to witness his shame.  Dipper couldn’t bring himself to turn around, but the tone of her voice held enough disappointment to make up for it.  “Why are you sneaking out?”

It would’ve been easy to say he was going to the bathroom, or getting a snack, or anything besides the actuality.  He almost scraped a fabrication together, but a pang of hypocrisy squeezed out the truth.  “I have to go find Bill.”

“Bill?” Mabel repeated, incredulous.  “You mean that guy you pretended wasn’t here last night?  The guy you’re _hiding_ from me?”

Every word struck like a spike of ice, yet he couldn’t turn to face her.  He couldn't comfort her, couldn’t soften the sharp edges of his deception.  “Yeah.  I have to go find him.”

Mabel’s bed creaked behind him, followed by the sticky sound of her bare feet padding on the old wood floor.  A hand fell on his shoulder, not holding him back, just acting as a gentle reminder.  Dipper waited for more verbal punishment, but there was none.  “Just be safe, ‘kay?”

“Yeah.  Thanks, Mabel.”

~

He could’ve sworn that it was midnight in the woods.  While Dipper’s watch told him it was still early evening, the forest surrounding the Mystery Shack had already driven out the remaining sunlight, rendering the foliage nothing but dark smudges and ominous leaf crackles.  Cold wind stung his cut face, trying to pry the new scab open.  Even though he was familiar with these woods, without his journal or anything resembling a plan, he felt completely lost.

“Bill!” he shouted, just barely vaulting his voice over the wall of wind.  The gust seemed to be trying to push him back home, forcing him to fight for every step.  Even if he had known Bill was in the woods, he still had little chance of finding him if he didn’t want to be found.

A small beacon flared a few hundred yards away, a pinprick of light against the encompassing darkness.  Dipper darted behind a tree, starting to wonder if wandering into the forest alone at night wasn’t the best idea.  With everything that could be lurking here, not finding Bill was the least of his problems.

The light didn’t move, but was soon joined by another identical spot, hovering near its brother.  Dipper recognized them as eyes, but not those of anymonster he had read about in the journal.  It wouldn’t make sense for a predator to have glowing eyes, after all, they would scare off the prey.  He hoped.

“Bill?” he shouted again, squinting at the bright dots.  They were just about level with his own eyes, but then, he could be imagining things.  His head still didn’t feel quite right since his dirt nap behind the school.

The lights blinked out, accompanied by a fury of snapping twigs.  “Go 'way,” Bill answered childishly.  High, staccato noises punctuated the wind, sounding almost like bird noises, but a bit too human.

Warmth spread through Dipper’s quivering body.  Bill was still here...he had been waiting, hadn’t he?  Had he known this would happen, too?

“Look, just tell me the truth, ok?  Tell me the truth and I...”   _And I what?_ he asked himself, unable to think of a proper way to end that promising sentence.  No matter what Bill would tell him, there would still be bullies, still teasing and torment and Trevor.  He could feel the blood pounding just below the surface of his cheek, rebuilding the fractured flesh.  Things would probably just get worse.

The spots of light returned, inquisitive, hanging on Dipper’s unformed words.  Dipper gulped, feeling dizzy again, his head whirling around his skull.  He had no idea what he would be getting into, but after a summer in Gravity Falls, the fear of the unknown had completely lost its edge.  Things could definitely be weirder.  And, recalling Bill happily accepting punishment for Dipper’s sake, he knew things could definitely be worse.

“And what?” Bill rasped, cold breath only a few inches from the back of Dipper’s neck.  Dipper leaped in the air, turning around with both fists raised defensively.  He settled immediately, now able to see Bill’s body around his glowing eyes.  His white hair seemed to be luminescent, his pristine teeth tiny lanterns lit by those two round entities.  The spaces below his eyes glittered, like stars reflected in puddles.  Bill’s left shoulder sagged below the right, and Dipper realized he was still holding the Biology textbook.

Dipper took a deep breath.  “And we can still be friends, okay?”

Bill launched himself at Dipper, knocking him into a wet smattering of leaves littering the forest floor.  The corner of the textbook jabbed Dipper’s side, cutting off his surprised laughter with a sharp “Ow!”  Bill rolled off of him, but seemed to be considering leaping right back on.

“The _truth_ , Bill,” Dipper reiterated, failing to remain as serious as he had been moments before.  Bill’s usual cheeriness had brought up Dipper’s mood along with it, plaguing his statements with spontaneous giggling.

“I...lied about what I saw,” Bill acknowledged.  The twin orbs slid back and forth, rocking along with the guilty Bill.  “I saw you hurt.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Dipper said, “and...and I’m glad you tried to protect me.  Just no more lying, okay?  Be honest.”

“Honest!” Bill duplicated.  “Yes!”

Dipper smirked, aware that Bill probably couldn’t see his expression.  He knew Bill would eagerly tell him anything he wanted to know, possibly even his own future.  It was all too tempting to let loose a barrage of questions, but only one question found its way to Dipper’s mouth.

“You want to sleep over tonight?”

~

Dipper wouldn’t let Bill fly him home.  That was an experience for another time.  He accepted the small strain on his legs, the labor of walking to school that morning now seeming like nothing.  What was a little walking, after all?

It was lighter outside the forest, but it seemed to officially have become ‘late’.  The lights in the Mystery Shack were all turned off.

Bill remained calm all the way up to the attic, surprisingly able to restrain himself from the many wonders of the gift shop.  Dipper opened the bedroom door slowly, not wanting to disturb Mabel, and realized he hadn’t really planned this out.  Was he really going to make Bill sleep on the bare floor?

“Wait, let me grab--” he began to say, but Bill shoved him aside, walking into the room with utmost naturalness.

“I’ll just sleep here,” Bill shrugged, pointing to the corner of the bedroom opposite where Dipper slept.  Dipper came in to see where Bill was pointing, and his hand shot to his mouth to muffle his surprise.

A pile of quilts was waiting for them, topped off with one of Mabel’s extra pillows.


	4. Projects

“Both!”

“Of course!  Why didn’t _I_  think of that?”

Dipper rubbed his left hand into his eye.  As his memory wasn’t yet fully awake, his thumb unknowingly intruded onto his tender cheek, the burst of pain making him jolt out of bed.  The sky outside hadn’t quite decided to brighten up, but the bedroom was fully lit.  Bill and Mabel knelt over a disorganized pile of art supplies, and it was hard to tell which one of them looked more excited about whatever they were working on.

With Dipper’s vision still unadjusted to the sudden light, his interpretation of what was going on was mostly limited to the strong scent of glue.  He levered himself upright in his bed, blinking blindly at the two blurry people on the attic floor.

“He’s awake!” Bill announced, glancing up from his handiwork for a moment.  Numerous crumpled tubes lay scattered around his legs, with one unscathed cylinder being held fatefully above them.  Bill’s souvenirs of yesterday’s excursion to the back of the school had nearly vanished, leaving only a few red marks and a discolored spot creeping out from under his hairline.  In such proximity to Bill’s dauntless grin, these small afflictions were hardly noticeable.

“Morning, Dipper,” Mabel smiled, ripping open a packet of glitter.  Her hair already sparkled with the infernal particles, turning her head into a chocolate-milk night sky.

Dipper’s memories of last night had revived, but they didn’t seem to fit what was happening now.  He remembered the fight, Mabel catching him sneaking out, finding Bill in the woods...it hadn’t been a dream, had it?

No, Bill’s makeshift bed was still roughly in the proximity of the corner, though the quilts had dispersed and the pillow was nowhere to be seen.  Dipper’s cut had rekindled with soreness, bringing fresh fear of what would happen at school that day.  Neither Bill nor Mabel showed any sign of worry, focused entirely on...

“What _is_ that?” Dipper asked.  Even with the sleep dust expelled from his eyes, he had no idea what they were working on.  To him, it just looked like a colorful, glue-ridden mess.

“Our project!” Bill answered proudly.  His fingers had clamped into a small vice, pulverizing the poor plastic tube.  Glitter glue gushed from the narrow spout, forming a small, liquidy pile on the large sheet of poster board.  Dipper wondered what pink, glittery blobs had to do with insects.

“Bill’s an art genius,” Mabel gushed, shaking glitter onto the mound of glitter glue, “almost as good as me!”  They both admired their creation, which Dipper kept seeing as a unicorn turd.

“So many colors,” Bill murmured, swiping his hands at the disarrayed crayons rolling on the floorboards.  Selecting a bright green one, he began carefully sketching something next to the glitter thing.  Mabel was hard at work ripping open a fresh package of pipe cleaners.

If Dipper still only had grades to worry about, he probably would’ve been upset.  Now he could only imagine what Mr. Paalke’s reaction would be.  Still, just to be safe, he slid his Biology materials from his nightstand to his lap, wanting to ensure the essay he had written was still intact.

His green plastic folder flipped open.  Nothing but his mostly-empty notebook.

_I...must’ve just left it at school.  Yeah, that’s it_ ,  Dipper began muttering silently to himself, flipping through his notebook just to make sure his report hadn’t magically reattached to the metal spine.

Mabel and Bill’s constant giggling ate away at his spawning worry, reminding him that grades didn’t really matter so much.  His straight-A record wasn’t winning anyone’s favor, teachers included.  For the past couple of days, he had had more to look forward to at school than perfect papers and being ignored.  He could understand why Mabel went to school early to see Candy and Grenda.

“Come on, Dip, you gonna make _us_ do all the work?” Mabel teased, throwing a fistful of fuzzy pipe cleaners at her twin.  Dipper shielded his face, swatting the pipe cleaners away.  Bill was still deeply focused on his picture, but deflected any wayward pipe cleaners that came near him without having to look up.  The unicorn turd was left untouched by the flurry of art supplies.

His sister had always been the artsy one, but looking at the monstrosity she and Bill had already constructed, Dipper knew he couldn’t make it any worse.  Selecting the least dull crayon he could find, he crouched next to Bill and started to draw.

~

The sun snuck up on the trio in the attic, bringing with it the sickly sweet smell of cooking batter.  The poster board was now somehow even more decorated, but had even less to do with the topic of their science project.  Dipper couldn’t be embarrassed by it, seeing how entranced Bill was by the sparkling disarray of ‘art’, but was starting to feel worried that he wouldn’t find the essay.   _What if this is all we have to present?_

“Stancakes!” their grunkle shouted from the bottom of the stairs, “Come and get ‘em, knuckleheads!”

Mabel flung the pom-poms she had been adjusting away and sprung for the door.  Bill watched her with interest, then turned to Dipper.  He was smiling as wide as ever, but was clearly confused, seeking an explanation.

“It’s breakfast time, Bill,” Dipper clarified, laughing as he rose to his feet.  Bill copied his motions, still looking at him expectantly.

Dipper stared back for a second, his smile fading away.  Bill tilted his head, looking almost doglike.

“Time to _eat_ ,” Dipper enunciated, stretching out the last word before clicking the “t” shut.

“Ha!  In the _morning_?” Bill laughed dubiously, crossing his arms.  He couldn’t hold them in this position for long, constantly shifting the position of his hands.  His arms kept switching between top and bottom, causing them to swish noisily against each other.

“Um, yeah?”  Dipper answered as he walked to the door.  “Granted, ‘Stancakes’ are barely edible, but they still qualify as food.”

Mabel had set out an extra place for Bill, who came downstairs with Dipper just as Stan was shoveling the last half-baked Stancake onto a platter.  Bill froze for a moment, comprehended that the empty chair was for him, and cautiously climbed into it.

“And I thought Mabel was just pulling my leg with this ‘friend’ stuff!” Stan joked, flinging his oven mitts into the sink.  He impaled a Stancake with a steak knife--they were running low on clean silverware and this was the best they had--and started serving up the undercooked dough.  “What’s next,” he cackled to Dipper, “wearing clean clothes?”

“H-hey!  Stan!”  Dipper exclaimed indignantly, adjusting his hat self-consciously.  Mabel laughed along with Stan, but Bill was still deep in thought, as though something was seriously wrong.

“Whassa matter, kid?  Stancakes not good enough for ya?”  Stan gruffed, eating one of the flapjacks while trying not to notice the taste.  He couldn’t tell if this friend of Dipper’s was more put off by the noticeable strands of his gray hair in the food or the fact that he was still in his underwear.

Bill took this as an invitation to eat, even though he was still wary of the concept of ‘breakfast’.  He used his steak knife to lift the floppy substance off the plate, carrying it precariously to his mouth, which, stretched as it was, was no match for the huge, abnormally-shaped Stancake.

Dipper tried to hold back his laughter upon seeing the yellow pancake globs smushed onto Bill’s cheeks.  Bill seemed completely ignorant of the fact that he was literally biting off more than he could chew, using the unfitting utensil to try and push the entire cake into his maw.  “You know you can cut it into pieces, right?” Dipper asked.

“No we can’t!” Mabel decided, taking Bill’s lead and attempting to swallow her breakfast in a single bite.  After a few unsuccessful moments, both of the brave souls began to choke on their own misguidedness.  “Ah may ah mahstaah!” Mabel said through a mouthful of pastry and saliva.

Stan was nothing but entertained.  “This friend a’ yours has good taste!” he commented approvingly to Dipper.  Even as Mabel and Bill began chugging water to free up their esophagi, Stan was reluctant to cut into his Stancake, not wanting to pass up his opportunity to take the challenge.

Amid all this craziness, Dipper felt calmer than he had been in a while.

~

Bill had positively _insisted_ on flying to school that day.  Mabel had wholeheartedly agreed with him--it would be the safest way to preserve their masterpiece.  Even the simple act of walking would be too jostling, and could compromise all their hard work.

Dipper was once again forced to carry both textbooks.  Bill didn’t have a backpack, and even if he did probably wouldn’t have worn it anyway.  He was too protective of what they had made to share his attention with anything else.  Well, a little bit could go to Dipper, but most of it was fixed on the poster board.

“I...I must have just left the essay at school, right?” Dipper thought out loud, intentionally raising his voice in hopes that Bill would answer him.  The floating child showed no signs of acknowledgement, watching the display like a hawk in case a speck of glitter were to fly off in the light fall breeze.

“Bill,” Dipper said directly, a little annoyed that he was being ignored, “do you think I--”

“Dunno,” Bill muttered disinterestedly, still staring at the thing of beauty.

Bill’s offhandedness did nothing to calm Dipper’s anxieties.  If anything, they were only greater now.  It was hard to accept that Bill just didn’t know, but Dipper wouldn’t let himself believe he was hiding something.  Not again.

Bill’s single-minded focus on the project shattered under the weight of a few silent seconds.  He looked anxiously to Dipper, who felt he had nothing more to say.

“OK,” he complied to an unspoken request, letting his feet grace the sidewalk.   Dipper continued walking, but stopped at the sound of Bill’s shoes sliding onto the rough concrete.  Bill was still holding the poster board, but no longer as delicately.  It trembled in the breeze, quivering with the fear that it would be dropped.

Dipper had the same concern, as it looked like Bill might fall over.  He was blinking rapidly, or rather, winking, holding one eye open for a millisecond before switching sides.  Even though the sun’s warmth was still managing to best the approaching winter, Dipper felt a chill.  He found his own eyes twitching just from watching Bill, but they couldn’t reach near the speed of his eyelids.  As suddenly as they had begun to move, both of Bill’s eyes froze open, staring back at Dipper.

“The report is at school!” Bill said victoriously, bending his legs to raise both feet off the ground and float forward.  His attentive grip on the poster board returned, steadying it against the dangerous autumn breeze.  

“Thanks, Bill,” Dipper sighed, letting go of the worrisome thought.  Even though he felt better knowing everything would be fine, it was a bit unsettling to see Bill use his powers like that.  Thankfully, he didn’t seem any worse for wear after it.  Unconsciously emulating Bill, Dipper himself grinned, stretching his own cheeks beyond their normal limits.   _If anything, maybe this’ll help him gain control, like some kind of training._  He wouldn't want to take advantage of Bill’s abilities, but if it could help him in the long run...

No one else crossed their path until they reached the school.  Dipper ignored the silent stares, rolling his eyes and bracing himself for the insults.   _Yeah, yeah, we’re regular Leonardo da Vinci’s.  Yes, my sister did help us, as a matter of fact.  Why do you ask?_

He looked at the large sheet in Bill’s hands, just to remind himself how horribly noticeable it was, but noticed something a bit more eye-catching.  “Bill, get _down_!” he hissed, grabbing Bill’s shoulder and pulling him back to Earth.

Bill’s bent knees slammed into the sidewalk, leaving a healthy pair of scrapes. He just laughed, tottering on his knees for a moment before lurching to his feet.  “Sorry, just excited!”  As they walked through the school doors (Dipper needing to prop open both of the double doors to make way for the project), Bill tilted the poster board forward so everyone could gaze upon it.  And by gosh, did they gaze.

“You can take it to class, I’m just going to grab the report,” Dipper said with a wave, hurrying from what was quickly becoming an epicenter of attention.  He refused to let himself feel embarrassed by the display (especially since Bill loved it so much), but that wouldn’t stop him from wanting to avoid being stared at.

Though he reached his locker quickly, he turned his locker combination with sluggish movements.  He barely realized he was trying to delay opening his locker, worrying about what would happen if his report wasn’t there.   _Then we go to Biology, and present that..that thing, and even though Bill won’t care, I’ll be left to pick up the pieces..._

Dipper shook his head, nearly dislodging his signature hat.  With a squeak of its hinges, the locker door swung open.  The dark rectangular insert seemed to be daring Dipper to try and find the report.

_No..._ Dipper flipped through each of his notebooks, even checking between the pages of his math textbook, but there was no essay.  A thick stone dropped into his stomach, pinning him to the floor in front of his locker.  He just wanted to stay there, frozen, forget about Biology and...and that lying faker...

The warning bell sounded, jerking Dipper up.  A few kids were alarmed by Dipper’s forceful slamming of his locker, unused to seeing the nerdy kid angry.  Upset, annoyed, sometimes downright moody, sure, but never angry.

Though he wasn’t the last one in class today, it seemed that Dipper drew just as much attention as he had yesterday.  Surprising, considering the glittery collage that Bill was presenting in the middle of the classroom.  Bill’s craziness had evidently begun to lose its charm, while Dipper’s descent to class scapegoat was new and exciting.  Seeing the deep furrow in his brow, other students began chattering excitedly, wondering if they could expect a sequel to yesterday’s flare up.

“Dipper Dipper Dipper!” Bill chanted, hopping up and down, making it rain glitter onto the heads of nearby classmates.  “Didja get the report?”

“It wasn’t _there_ ,” Dipper snarled, refusing to give him a passing glance as he trudged to his seat.  A few kids “ooo”ed at the snippy remark.  Trevor hadn’t even gotten to class yet, and things were already heating up.

Bill’s face fell.  His gaping frown was a perfect reversal of his usual grin.  “Wh-what do you mean?” he hiccuped, each word ending with a little squeak.  The space betwen his lashes began to shimmer, but his eyes clearly weren’t glowing.  Dipper’s stony countenance crumbled as Bill’s lower lip began to tremble a bit.

Before he could reevaluate his actions, Mr. Paalke strode into the room, coffee cup in hand, already glancing to the back of the class expectantly.  He overlooked the shimmering poster board, which Bill had now lowered contritely, in lieu of savoring Dipper’s own little display.  The kid had been persevering for a surprisingly long time, but now it seemed that Pines finally had enough.  Such abnormal children wouldn’t be tolerated.

A few stragglers, including Trevor, followed after the teacher, just making it to their seats before the bell.  “Well, who’s ready to present their projects?” Mr. Paalke interrogated, taking the time to inspect each student’s measly offerings. By far, Bill’s project was the most interesting, letting him go first would be too easy.  Mr. Paalke’d much rather start off with something a bit more problematic.

“Trevor,” he selected, smirking at the boy’s empty hands, “why don’t you and Roger go first?”  If he could count on anyone to have absolutely nothing done, forcing an entertaining impromptu project, it was that lardball.  And if it happened to stir up a bit more drama, all the better.

Trevor--and the rest of the class, for that matter--didn’t appear particularly surprised.  Dipper saw him take a few crumpled looseleaf papers from his backpack and plod to the front of the room alongside a lankier boy.  With the utmost dignity, Trevor cleared his throat insufferably, and Dipper swore he caught a glimpse of a smirk directed at him.

Whereas Trevor’s partner simply looked lost, Trevor confidently began his report.  “Insects, one of the many types of arthropods...”

The words struck Dipper immediately.  It was _his_ essay, down to the very last word.  He should’ve expected as much; Trevor wouldn’t have stopped at simply injuring him physically, he had to undermine his grades, too.

While Dipper festered in distemper, his fellow students and Mr. Paalke listened to Trevor’s report, genuinely surprised by its quality.  Roger visibly attempted to avoid the stares, and seemed to be considering asking Trevor what was going on.  Trevor ignored him, pausing the report only to sound out a particularly inhospitable word.  Dipper was furious.

“Very nice, Trevor,” Mr. Paalke said approvingly.  As much as he’d like to accuse him of cheating now, he’d save that pleasure for another time.  “Now, why don’t we see Dipper and Bill’s presentation?”  The poster board Bill was holding was starting to intrigue him.

Both partners were straight-faced as they dutifully took their positions.  Bill held the display up for all to see:  incomprehensible scribbles of all different colors, enough glitter to make the dull fluorescent glow of the classroom lights blinding, and layers of glitter glue that nearly obscured the white of the poster board underneath.

Everyone was excited by this display, holding back laughter and pointing out various aspects of the conglomerate.  They could all guess who had doused the poster in glitter, but a few of the more detailed elements, like a perfect green crayon sketch of a hornet, remained a mystery.  Their expectations were built up, rendering Dipper’s silence acutely anticlimactic.

“Insects!” Bill boomed, startling Dipper enough to make him jump a bit.  The rest of the students waited with baited breath.

“One of the many types of arth...arthro...pods!” Bill added enthusiastically.  Dipper saw what seemed to be a nervous twitch, but upon further inspection was the rapid movement of his eyelids, hiding and displaying both of his eyes individually faster than he would’ve thought humanly possible.  The rest of the students probably couldn’t even see his eyes moving.

Trevor’s, or rather Dipper’s, report was repeated, word for painstaking word, from Bill’s mouth.  Dipper was able to pick it up in a few places, and couldn’t stop himself from correcting a mispronounced word or two, but Bill performed the bulk of it.

“Very well done, you two,” Mr. Paalke praised, arching his neck to see the entire poster.  He wasn’t sure what was more entertaining, the replicated report or the visual aid.  Both deserved a bit of dwelling on, which he was more than happy to provide.

“Now class,” he began, seeing the students already squirming with anticipation, “I’m sure you realized something a bit...familiar about their presentation, yes?”  Not daring to laugh, many students nodded enthusiastically, knowing they would be in for a treat.  “I hate to say it, but I don’t believe that both this pair and the last one did completely original work, do you?”

He didn’t need any encouragement from his students, the paling of Dipper’s face was enough.  “Now, as for determining whose project is plagiarized and which is the original...”  He stood in front of Dipper and Bill, shielding them slightly from the class’s ogling.  “I don’t know about _you_ , class, but I would be hard-pressed to label _this_ project as a copy.”  As if in response, a piece of the glitter-glue crust cracked free and shattered onto the floor, revealing another layer underneath.

The smug expression on Trevor’s face was beginning to wane as he realized what was happening.  This was all wrong--taking Dipper’s report was supposed to give him an “A” and _them_ an “F”, but that freakish poster...

“I’m sorry , Trevor,” Mr. Paalke apologized without a hint of empathy, “but because it appears you stole their report, I’m going to need to give you a failing grade.”

Deeming it safe to smile, Dipper gaped at Bill, hardly believing their luck.   _But it hadn’t been luck, had it?_ he realized, _He knew it from the beginning._

As the class applauded them back to their seats, Bill began to sag, nearly dragging the precious poster board on the floor.  He relinquished it without protest when Dipper took it from him, all his energy being used just to navigate his body back to his desk.  With a little extra help from Dipper, Bill made it into his seat and was asleep before the next presentation began.

~

“Ah tolla truth.”

“I know, Bill.  Sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“S’okay.  Ah’m sorry ah lettim take the ‘port.”

Dipper’s textbook wasn’t looking so bad now.  At least the book didn’t wiggle around while he was trying to carry it.  Bill was certainly bulkier, and had a habit of squeezing Dipper’s neck whenever he felt like he was slipping off, but not much heavier.  Dipper suspected that, even as Bill was barely conscious, he was still floating a little.

Stan gave the duo a quick wave as they passed through the kitchen.  He was fiddling with a stuffed hippo head that refused to stay glued atop a taxidermied eagle and didn’t pay Bill any mind.  Mabel shot Dipper a funny look, but didn’t follow them to the attic.  Bill had fallen back asleep, so Dipper laid him in his corner.  There was only one quilt left in its original position, and a few pipe cleaners had invaded the sleeping space, but this didn’t bother Bill.

“So I guess we got another roommate, huh?” Mabel asked Dipper as he came back down the stairs.

“Yeah,” he nodded, “I guess we do.”


	5. Pages

The lights in the attic had long since cooled, their residual warmth sucked into the vacuum of the howling night air.  Eventually even the soft pacing from beneath the floorboards had abandoned Bill, leaving him alone with the two steady heartbeats.  Soon the only source of illumination was the stars, much brighter than they were in the more populated parts of Gravity Falls.  It was quiet and secluded here, which, unfortunately for Bill, just made the invisible pandemonium even more glaring.  He rocked himself back and forth on his makeshift bed, hands clutched over his ears.  At least in the forest there was a little noise for him to grasp onto, but now there was next to nothing to block out the onslaught of unbidden prophecies and visions.

The creaking was steady now, a uniform back-and-forth, heard by no one but himself.  Irritation crawled beneath his skin, daring him to rip it off and see what was underneath.  There weren’t any trees to thrash against here, just the beds.  He eyed the rear bedposts of Dipper’s bed--they certainly looked durable…

Bill shook his head violently, spawning a nasty twinge in his neck.  The throbbing of his chewed bottom lip was starting to numb away, leaving no feeling besides a sticky residue on his teeth.  He wasn’t going to let himself act like that, not here.  Not in front of Dipper and Mabel, he might wake them up.  They didn’t ask for many explanations, but he had a feeling they would be curious as to why he never slept.

 _Just a little nap?_  The silky voice rose above the senseless crowd, once again taunting him.  Twice that day Bill had taken its advice, embracing the things he saw instead of shunning them, and things had turned out fine, hadn’t they?  Doing so had made him a little tired, but that was all.  The voice had told him how to control that gushing faucet of knowledge, how to really see instead of just gaping blindly at abstract nonsense.  It was thrilling, to be able to understand the images, feel that rush of control.   _Power._

Dipper turned over in his bed, the shift in his weight allowing the covers to slip to the floor.  The unexpected noise brought Bill back, just for a second.  Just long enough for him to feel the twinge in his stomach.  Nothing about this felt right.  Yeah, the things that haunted him were annoying.  Sometimes a little more than that.  But at least it was something he knew he could handle.

 _Is it?_  Bill stopped his rocking, listening to the voice instead of blocking it out.  Silence.  It had gone back to the recesses of his mind, but left a mountain of questions.  Bill wondered if there was anything to worry about, and if not, why that nice voice made him feel so uneasy.

He spent the rest of the night debating with himself, both hoping and dreading that the voice would return.

~

“Bill, I know you’re awake,” Mabel whispered from her bed.  Dipper was still asleep, unsurprisingly, as the sun was still drifting somewhere below the horizon.  The forest had paled to a moderate gray, but was still awaiting the sunlight that would allow it to blossom with color.  Hardly seemed like a decent hour for anyone to be awake, but Bill and Mabel were both sitting up alertly, both surprised by the other’s consciousness.  Bill had been pretending to be asleep, but apparently hadn’t been doing a very good job.

“I just woke up,” Bill said quickly, careful to keep his voice below its usual volume.  It was a little tough for him to hear himself, but Mabel could hear him just fine.

“Yeah, me too,” she nodded, quietly sliding out of bed, keeping her eyes on Dipper.  Bill started to get up as well, but Mabel waved him back down, shushing him furiously.

“Don’t wake him up!” she ordered as she tiptoed to the door.  “I have to get to Grenda’s reverse sleepover before she and Candy wake up!”

“Reverse what?”

Mabel sighed, rolling her irises around the entire circumference of her eyes.  “Ok, after what happened last week, Grenda’s mom won’t let us have sleepovers there anymore.  So now we do the opposite of sleepovers, where we start out asleep and then have a pillow fight and _then_...forget it, I have to go!”  Forgetting that Dipper was still snoozing, she slammed the door shut and stomped down the stairs.

Bill listened for a change in Dipper’s breathing, but heard none.  He settled back into his padded corner with a sigh, gladly accepting a few more hours of silence.

~

It was comforting to be back in the forest again, among the flurry of chirping, crunching noises.  There was plenty to distract him here, even without the added amusement of having Dipper along with him.

“Guess Mabel’s just going to miss out on this one,” Dipper let out a slow breath, giving the Mystery Shack behind them one last hopeful glance before plunging into the forest.  He paged expertly through the Journal, drawing Bill’s attention immediately.

“Whatcha got?” Bill shouted, stretching out his neck to plop his chin on Dipper’s right shoulder as he walked.  Dipper stumbled, still not quite used to Bill’s sudden interjections, but Bill kept his head firmly in place, trying to read over Dipper.

“Just...a journal,” Dipper said offhandedly, remembering after a second what he had been looking for.  He shrugged Bill off, and held the book out for him to see.

Penned there was a map, leading through the forest to an unmarked dot.  Bill couldn’t quite make out the cursive writing that was littered around the sketches, but realized he didn’t need to.

 _That’s right._  With a little concentration, he could hear a deep voice rising from the pages.  It was faint, reaching Bill’s ears from a dustier, quieter time, but still more comprehendible than that stupid squiggly writing.   _See?  Easy!  You don’t need anyone’s help._

“It looks like it might lead to something _big_ ,” Dipper went on, pushing his index finger along the marked trail.  Bill watched attentively, experiencing a fresh stream of images with each fluid movement.

Dipper caught Bill’s gaze and stopped himself, his finger paused just before the ambiguous end point.  “Hey, if...if you already know what’s there or whatever, don’t tell me, okay?  I want to be surprised.”

“Got it!” Bill agreed, glad Dipper hadn’t asked him any more questions.  It was nice to know stuff sometimes, like where Dipper was when he needed to find him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that there were some things he shouldn’t know.

Bill had certainly spent a lot of time in the woods, but it was different with Dipper.  Everything was mysterious and secretive when he was around, even the normal stuff like dead leaves and broken sticks.

“Clearly a Chupacabra trail,” Dipper pointed out, inspecting one of the smashed twigs carefully.  He rubbed the damp bark between his fingers, took a tentative sniff, and touched the cracked wood to the tip of his tongue.  “Headed...north...”

Bill felt that he was expected to do something, and began clapping loudly for Dipper’s discovery.  Eager to see more of the amazing performance, Bill ripped a handful of grass from the forest floor, juiced it between his fingers, and presented it eagerly to Dipper.  “What’s _this_ mean, huh?”

Dipper’s smile twisted into a grimace.  “Uh, yeah, haha, very funny...”  A fake cough gave him an excuse to turn his head away.  

With a series of small leaps, Bill situated himself back into Dipper’s field of vision, standing much closer than necessary.  “Aw, come on!  Don’t be so shy!”

“That’s _enough_ , Bill!” Dipper scolded, pushing Bill away.  With a sharp tug, the white-and-blue hat tilted to shield Dipper’s eyes from the sight of Bill falling and staying in the dirt.

Bill wiped the green residue on his hair, laughing weakly.  He curled his fingers tighter, coaxing a number of his follicles to give up their slender children.  He stared at the clump of white fuzz in his hand, and his bursts of laughter became sharper and disconnected, as mechanical as an alarm clock.

His moistening eyes bored into the distance for a moment, alight with attentiveness.  All Dipper could hear was his own footsteps.  The light tune of birdsong disappeared, then restarted shyly, along with a second set of footfalls.

“You’re _funny_ , Dipper!” Bill screamed, digging his nails into Dipper’s forearm.  Dipper tried to jerk away, but he was hopelessly caught.

“Dip-per,” Bill sounded out, tasting the vowels and chewing the consonants, “is that really your name?”

“Y-yeah, of course, Bill,” Dipper nodded.  His hat had nearly fallen off, allowing his birthmark to peek through his bangs.

Bill hummed, running his lips over his teeth.  “Nope!” he decided, pulling harder on Dipper’s arm.  “Gosh, you’d think you’d know your own _name_ , Pine Tree!”

Dipper took in a quick breath, and held it as the name ‘Pine Tree’ ran through his head.  It wasn’t the name he had expected to blurt out, but he still couldn’t relax, and not just because his arm was being held captive.

The two of them moved forward, physically connected by Bill’s grip, which made it difficult for Dipper to read the map in the journal.  Weird as this was, he could only hope it would pass, just like those other weird phases Bill had.  Wasn’t like Dipper had much choice, anyway.

“Aren’tcha talking any more, Pine Tree?” Bill jeered, spitting out the last two words like it was some kind of insult.  He was humming in a minor key, making the typical birdsong seem eerie.

“Whatever, Bill,” Dipper sighed, struggling to hold the thick book with one hand.  He wouldn’t admit that they were lost, but the map was starting to look like more like a toddler’s scrawl than actual information.

It couldn’t be later than noon, but the foliage overhead had grown thick enough to choke out most of the daylight.  Bill hardly noticed, his eyes glowing of their own accord to counteract the darkness, but Dipper gulped nervously.  He could barely see the map, and even if he could, he doubted it would be much help.

“A-are we close, Bill?” he stuttered, struggling to see anything but foggy blackness.  Only the two small beams of light and the pressure on his arm reminded him that he wasn’t alone.

“Hey, you said not to tell!” Bill replied in a singsong voice, letting go of Dipper to run ahead.  Dipper tried to follow, but tripped over his own feet.  By the time he picked himself up, he could only see a faint glow up ahead.  It had to be from Bill...but then, what was causing the rustling behind him?

“Bill?  Where did you--”  The question died with a yelp.  Dipper felt something crawl down his back, like a single bony finger tracing its way through his clothing, down his goosebumped skin.  Dipper’s hand reached for the remote area between his shoulder blades, but his five appendages clasped on thin air.  The rustling sound had gone as suddenly as it had come.

“Bill!” Dipper called out, holding the journal closer.  The light was gone.  Even that creepy laugh of Bill’s would’ve sounded comforting now.

Something sharp dug into Dipper’s ribs.  After nearly dropping the journal out of paranoia, Dipper remembered that it was just the flashlight he had brought along.   _Wait, flashlight?_  Dipper thumped his head against the journal; of course he had remembered to bring a flashlight.  He had just forgotten to remember bringing it.

Flicked on, the small appliance didn’t bring much light to the elderly trees around him, just a dull purple glow.  Dipper knocked the head of the flashlight against his palm, and felt something cringle against the lens.  He had converted the light into a makeshift blacklight, which was very helpful for deciphering the journal, but diminished its use as an actual source of light.

Under the altered flashlight’s beam, the Journal’s pages flashed with alternate messages, hiding the careful notes and pictures under hurried scrawls.   _Do NOT use as hiding spot,_ thick letters demanded _, for after my attempts to make it more secure, this area has become completely inhabitable to--_

The rustling had returned, though if the last sound had been a single voice, this one was an army, rising behind Dipper like a wave.  He turned around, Journal shaking wildly.  He tried to steady himself, but the book continued to writhe in his hands, apparently not because of Dipper’s shivering.  Dipper raised the light to better read the page, but instead saw the page rise to meet him, folding into a paper body composed of inked limbs.

“‘--Completely inhabitable to books, or paper of any kind.’  Well, Mr. Author, _I_ completely disagree,” the now-living Journal page recited in a high, nasally voice.  “I rather like being able to express my own opinions.”  Its arms crumpled together, forming a gesture Dipper assumed was supposed to be angry.  He personally found it more cute than anything.

“Oh, I _concur_ ,” a similar voice chimed in from the ground.  The rustling softened as more pages came into view, walking on their edged legs like two-dimensional ballerinas.  “If you ask me, this man should focus less on these monsters and more on his _monstrous_ nomenclature.”  The page was was speaking sighed and lowered its head, revealing the name “Hipponix” filling its back.

"It's his own fault," a third voice tittered, "not being able to tell a preservation spell from an animation spell.  He's lucky it only affected this part of the forest, or he'd hardly be able to scribble on us anymore, would he?"

Dipper watched as a discussion broke out among the group of miniature paper people.  The newest member, fresh from the Journal he still held in his hands, hopped down to join its kind, adding its voice to the shrill multitudes.  Dipper remained a spectator for half a minute until jarred back to life by another journal page beginning to rip away from his lifeless book.

“Oooh, no you don’t!” Dipper cracked, slamming the Journal’s covers together.  The half-formed page gave an anguished cry, startling the other papers into silence.  They quivered in the chilled breeze, watching Dipper with slanted text instead of eyes.

A light broke into the standoff, joined by a healthy helping of laughter.  Bill leaped into the crowd of enchanted journal entries, mercilessly tearing at any that dared to move.  Chaos ensued, the sentient pages hardly distinguishable from the ones that had been crushed by the lone attacker.  Bill reached greedily for the oddities, encouraged by their screams of terror.  Instead of rustling, the sound of paper tearing was the only thing Dipper could hear.

“Bill, stop!  They’re not dangerous, they’re just paper!”  Dipper stepped forward, but couldn’t bring himself to let go of the Journal.  Dozens of pages had already been torn away, he didn’t want to lose any more to the forest’s enchantment.  Dipper already had so little information, he couldn’t give up the one reliable source he had.

Most of the creatures had fallen to Bill’s feet and fists, lying in quiescent piles, now nothing more than scraps.  Bill had ceased his massacre, but his eyes were still alight with glee.  

“Who cares?” He retorted, his bouncing voice booming above the tiny frettings of the remaining paper people.  “They act all smart, but I bet I know all this stuff already.”  He reached for a dead page under his foot, mostly whole but suffering a fatal rip in its upper right corner.  Bill continued laughing as he looked at the page, even as the ecstasy in his eyes died away.  He couldn’t read what was on the page, thanks to his own shoeprints obstructing the writing, but could comprehend enough of it to understand.  Whatever he saw, it made him as still as the paper corpses around him.

“Yeah, you’re very smart, Bill,” Dipper huffed, letting go of him to recapture the remnants of the Journal’s offspring.  Thankfully, one of the survivors had been the page with the map.  Journal held protectively at his side, Dipper began making his way back the way they came.  “You coming?”

“Mm hmm,” Bill answered, still entranced by the motionless page between his fingers.

~

“What’s ‘omizent’ mean?”

“ _Omniscient_ ,” the page corrected with a haughty groan.  “All-seeing.  Like they know everything.”

“Oh,” Bill clamped his mouth shut.  The taped-up page reclined in his outstretched hand, too weak to stand.  Bill’s repairs hadn’t been top quality, but good enough to allow the magic to work on the ripped Journal page.  The paper golem was all too happy to divulge the information it held in its fragile body.  It had been one of the Journal’s most interesting pages, after all.

“Is that...a good thing?”

The paper repeated its frustrated noise, a high, condescending whine.  “Yeah, I _guess_.  Who _wouldn’t_ want to know everything?”

This was the only page with a face, or at least, something resembling one.  A single eye was placed on the front of its flat head, enclosed by a triangle.  Bill stared into the unblinking ellipse, feeling, for no reason he could could properly place, that it was a picture of him.


	6. Trust

            Dipper threw the fourth empty tape dispenser across the room, making it clatter onto the plastic corpses of the other three.  He pressed the last piece of tape onto the ripped, crumpled page, smoothing it out best he could.  Bill had certainly made his mark on the assortment of once-sentient pages, but most of them had recovered under Dipper's tender care.

            Despite the damage wrought by Bill, Dipper found that he actually had extra pages now.  He had only lost two pages to the enchantment, but had taken home more than a dozen.  Dipper had no idea how long the paper golems had been living there, but they looked no worse for their time spent in the forest. 

            The handwriting on the newly-acquired pages was no doubt that of the Author, but Dipper didn't recognize the pages.  It was hard to tell whether they were originally from his own Journal or from some other book; the Journal was already so disorganized that the subject mater was no help.  They could all fit in just about anywhere in the Journal, or just as easily be from something completely different.  Dipper tucked the new pages behind the back cover of Journal 3, resolving to run a more thorough analysis the next day.  He shut the book tightly, hoping all traces of the charm had left the paper.

            The stairs groaned under a familiar pair of feet, and Dipper turned his head just as the bedroom door burst open.  Mabel leaped into the attic and stumbled to a stop, overnight bag swinging at her side. 

            "Hey bros, how'd-" Mabel's open-mouth smile froze, tongue tracing the back of her teeth instead of completing her sentence.  Blinking at her solitary brother, she resumed in a softer voice, "how'd the investigation go?  You were planning on taking Bill out with you, weren't you?"

            "Mm," Dipper nodded, holding up his Journal and looking at his gold-tinted reflection.  He had been so excited about the new Journal pages that he had nearly forgotten about Bill.  It was easy enough to push aside his own thoughts, but impossible to push aside Mabel's inquiry.

            "What, did something happen?" Mabel pressed, shrugging her overpacked bag onto the floor and kneeling in front of Dipper.  Her fingers, each dressed in their own color of fingernail polish, pressed into her knees.

            "No, just," Dipper sputtered, bringing the Journal in against his chest.  "Bill didn't come back with me.  He stayed."

            "Well why the heck would he do that?" Mabel laughed, wiggling out of the uncomfortable position to lay on the floor, watching Dipper all the while.  "He was so excited about sleeping overnight yesterday that I didn't think he'd ever even _sleep!_ "

            "I don't know," Dipper murmured, arms tight at his sides.  "He was acting weird before, maybe-"

            "Dip, when has he _not_ acted weird?" Mabel interupted, laying her head on her crossed arms.  The curve of her lips weakened, forming an uncertain straight line.  "Come on, you've dealt with things _ten times_ weirder than him."

            Dipper was silent, not sure if what Mabel said was true or not.  The floating was fine, but the voices...that was something far beyond gnomes and candy monsters.  That was no quirky creature, but something darker.

            Mabel rolled onto her back and sat up, turning her head to the window.  Dipper followed her gaze, and was surprised to see only a few flecks of light against the velvet sky.  He had spent more time on his reconstruction project than he thought.  Seeing that night had long since fallen, he felt a twinge of worry, wondering what Bill had been doing for the past few hours.

            "I guess it's too late to go looking," Mabel sighed,  making a quick jump from the floor to her bed.  "But you'd better find him tomorrow."

            "I will," Dipper acquiesced, tucking the Journal under his bed.  Who knew, Bill could be back to his personal brand of 'normal' in the morning.

~

            The first thing Dipper noticed upon waking was Mabel's empty bed.  That wasn't much of a surprise, as she seemed to be doing something from sunrise to sunset.  The second thing he noticed was the strange pair of shadows on the floor, both stretching and shrinking opposite each other.  Outside the window, a pair of bare feet swung back and forth, heels nearly striking the glass.

            Dipper caught himself smiling.  Things were already off to a good start.

            Dipper pressed both hands against the window and swung the panes open, swatting away the obtrusive feet.  Bill's head flopped down, his toothy grin as wide as ever.  "Morning!" he shouted inches from Dipper's face.  Dipper flinched reflexively, but laughed, turning from the window and waving Bill inside.

            "Morning to you, too," Dipper said, sliding the Journal out and placing it on his bed.  Normally he wouldn't have started stuff like this until noon at the earliest, but with Bill around there was no chance of having a slow, peaceful morning.

            Bill looked thoughtfully at his designated corner of the room.  Mabel had folded the blankets into neat rectangles and placed the spare pillow on top.

            “I was gone,” Bill stated, blinking blankly at the unused sleeping space.

            “Yeah,” Dipper agreed with a slow nod, opening the Journal to the doctored pages.  There were still no signs of the charm, the pages were as lifeless as ever.  “Care to tell me where you went?”

            “The woods!”

            “Yeah, I kind of figured,” Dipper spat. “But _why?_   Why didn’t you come back?”

            “I…” Bill was confused.  Until he met Dipper, the voice had always told him to stay in the forest, but now the voice was quiet.  In fact, he hadn’t heard it since yesterday, when Dipper-

            “You’re mad at me,” Bill blurted, more in response to his own thoughts than Dipper’s question

            The answer caught Dipper by surprise.  He had been so worried about the pages that he had forgotten about pushing Bill.  Sure, Dipper had been annoyed with him at the time, but he should’ve known better.  “Not anymore.”

            Bill laughed out loud, launching himself across the room at Dipper.  They both fell onto the still-warm sheets, Dipper’s cries of protests smothered by Bill’s ecstatic giggling.  Managing to escape, Dipper rose back to his feet, rescuing the Journal from the Bill-infested bed.  “You okay, Bill?” he chuckled.

            Bill slid back to the floor, limbs sprawled like a starfish.  “Yeah, I’m okay—“

            Another memory clicked into place, catching his lips before they could pop out a “P”.  The other name still felt wrong, like the name of a different person, but he knew he had to use it.

            “—Dipper.”

~

            “I know they’re not moving _now_ , but better safe than sorry!”

            Bill had hoped for another adventure like yesterday’s, but Dipper was determined to figure out how the paper golem charm worked.  While Dipper flipped through the Journal, occasionally using his homemade blacklight, Bill impatiently rolled back and forth on the floor, kicking at anything that got in his way.

            Dipper couldn't find anything about animation spells in the Journal, but there were a few sections on counteracting malicious charms.  The parts on ghosts and exorcisms didn’t seem to be relevant, but a different page caught his attention.

            “Spell cancelling spell: will undo any spell acted on a particular object,” Dipper read out loud, tracing the cursive writing with his finger.  He had never tried using the spells in the Journal before, but this one didn’t seem too bad.  They just needed a few things for a spell circle, and then there was a funny-looking incantation.  The page said the spell worked on objects, so it should work fine on the pages.  The worst that could happen was that it didn’t work, right?

            “Hm, moonstones, mercury, and…unicorn hair?” Dipper continued, squinting at the ingredient list to ensure he had read it correctly.  Sure enough, that was what the spell called for, no matter how cliché it seemed.

            Well, the Journal showed where moonstones could be found nearby, and Grunkle Stan had to have one of those old thermometers somewhere, but the last ingredient seemed hopeless.  There wasn’t anything about unicorns in Journal 3, and Dipper doubted it’d be as easy to find as some shiny rocks.

            “We can get the first two things, at least.  I’ll see if I can find a substitute for unicorn hair.  Bill, think you can find some moonstones?”

            Dipper held out the Journal, turned to the map of nearby magical resources.  Bill sat up and swatted the page, not bothering to look at the map itself.  A few familiar places in the woods lit up in his memory.  Whatever ‘moonstones’ were, Bill knew exactly where he could find them.

            “You got it!” Bill exclaimed happily.  He gave Dipper a salute before hopping out the window.  Dipper got up after him to close it, only hoping that no one saw Bill float down from the second story window.  Oh well, Stan could always play it off as an attraction.

~

            Bill ran to the nearest moonstone spot, but his pace slowed as he grew closer.  Once he realized he was barely walking to the place, Bill stopped, recalling his destination clearly in his mind.  He was going the right way, and he sure wasn’t tired, so why was he going so slowly?

            _Hey, pipsqueak, you'd better turn around if you know what's good for you_ , the nearly-forgotten voice hissed, causing Bill to shiver despite the morning warmth.  The voice had been nice and helpful before, but now it sounded angry.  Was he doing something wrong?

            Bill stomped forward, each step a battle against his will.  The voice continued to berate him, sharpening with each laborious step.  Bill was used to ignoring the weird things he saw and heard, but he couldn’t completely ignore this.  Especially since, due to the growing feeling of dread in his stomach, the voice seemed to be right.

             Just a few yards ahead, a soft light painted the tree trunks blue.  Bill’s excitement broke the voice’s hold on him, letting him to dash toward the source of the light.

             Ringed around a fungus-covered stump were hundreds of small stones, each pulsing ghostly luminescence.  Bill reached toward the stones, and the voice’s foreboding grew from a whisper to a shout, startling his fingers away.   _Don't touch that, idiot!_

             They were just little rocks, though.  Dipper wouldn’t ask him to get them if they were dangerous, would he?  Unless he was still…no, Dipper said he wasn’t mad anymore.  Bill trusted him.

             Bill cupped his hands together and scooped up a small pile of moonstones.  Pangs of cold immediately shot up his arms, bringing Bill to his knees, but he didn’t drop the stones.  Eyes shut in concentration, Bill wobbled to his feet, loose pebbles sprinkling from his shaking hands.

             He turned around, but couldn’t bring himself to start walking.  His hands had already gone numb, and his instincts told him to run from the moonstone circle.  But the trees ahead of him looked different than before, and Bill couldn’t believe that this was the way he had come.  He remembered touching the Journal map and learning where the moonstones were, but couldn’t remember anything about the map itself.  No images flashed before his eyes, and all he could hear was the rustling of leaves above him.

             Bill’s breathing became anxious hiccups.  The light from his cupped hands reflected off his terror-pinched eyes.  For the first time he could remember, he was lost.

~

            _It’s gotta be around here somewhere,_ Dipper thought, throwing sweater after sweater into the growing pile behind him.  He’d found stuffed animals of ages past, plenty of yarn and knitting needles, but not—

            Dipper stopped his search through Mabel’s closet, realizing he knew exactly where it was.  Detaching himself from the pile of Mabel memorabilia, Dipper slipped her scrapbook from her nightstand.  A few pages in, sure enough, was the gnome beard hair she had saved.  He had thought she was crazy for saving it at first, but now he was glad she had.  It was no unicorn hair, but they were both magical creatures related to rainbows, and that seemed as close as he was going to get.

            Beard hair in hand, Dipper took a good look at the mess he had made and groaned.  Mabel would tease him to no end if she saw it, since this was the kind of thing he usually got mad at _her_ for.  Dipper checked the clock, and was surprised to see that about two hours had passed.  _All for some stupid beard hair,_ he thought, collapsing onto his bed.  He had to start learning to keep track of time.

            The Shack was quiet, as it usually was when Mabel was out and there weren’t any tourists.  Dipper spread his arms across the strewn covers, exhausted from looking through Mabel’s vast collection of junk.

            As soon as he allowed his eyes to close, they cracked open again, realization resting heavy in his stomach.  Dipper sprung to the window, but found no lazy pair of feet upon opening it.  “Bill?” he called to the empty roof.  No answer.

            Dipper replaced the beard hair in Mabel's scrapbook and snatched his Journal from underneath the mess heap.  He opened it to the map as he ran toward the woods, trying to think of where Bill had gone.

            _He…probably just got distracted.  Yeah, that’s it!_ Dipper consoled himself.  There couldn’t be anything dangerous this close to the Shack, he would’ve found it by now.  Bill probably knew these woods better than he did, anyway.

            “Bill!” Dipper yelled to the trees surrounding him, making his way to the closest moonstone location.  It didn’t take long to find the glowing ring of rocks, but there was no sign of a white-haired twelve-year-old.

            One by one, Dipper checked the other places marked by the map, his legs and throat aching more with each empty spot.  Last time, finding Bill had been easy, but now Dipper started to worry if Bill was in the forest at all.

            Reaching the last, farthest ring of moonstones, Dipper allowed himself a break, bracing himself against the enchanted stump and taking deep, raspy breaths.

            _He’ll turn up,_ he tried to convince himself, _he has to._

            Still, with no other places to check, Dipper began walking back, keeping his pace slow in order to linger as much as possible.  Mabel would have his skin if he left Bill in the woods _again_.  He wondered if she’d believe that he _did_ go looking for him.

            Dipper took a direct route to the Shack, away from the scattered moonstone piles.  After about a minute of walking, though, he noticed that the trees ahead of him seemed to be glowing.  He checked the map, but if he was where he thought he was, there shouldn’t be any moonstones nearby.  Now tiptoeing forward, Dipper approached the source of the light, gripping his Journal like a shield.

            “Dipper?” Bill peeked from the shining trees, still clutching the moonstones.  His eyes were half closed, lips puckered together.

            “Oh, thank _God_ , Bill,” Dipper said with relief, running ahead to meet him.  Though Bill gave Dipper a weak smile, he didn’t take so much as a single step toward him.  Instead, he held out his hands, brimming with magical stones.

            Dipper looked between Bill’s hands and his eyes.  Even by the faint light of the moonstones, there was something off about Bill.  Bill normally couldn't sit still, but now he looked too tired to move.

            As Dipper looked him over, Bill silently offered the stones again, pressing his hands against Dipper's.  “Here,” he choked, the word dissolving into a shallow coughing fit.

            Dipper noticed the moonstones for the first time.  “We…probably only need a few of these, Bill,” he said weakly, selecting a few stones from the dozens Bill was holding.  “Are you okay?”

            Bill's hands spread apart, dropping the excess stones into a small pile at his feet.  His arms hung heavy at his sides, but after blinking a few times, his eyes regained a bit of their spark.

            “Mmm…yeah,” Bill nodded.  Already he could remember where he was, along with the hundreds of other useless facts that swam through his mind.  The renewed hum of voices in his mind was comforting.  He still had no feeling in his hands, but he started swinging his arms back and forth, finding that his energy had returned.

            Dipper didn’t look convinced, but Bill _did_ seem back to normal.  “Okay, let’s go finish this stupid spell."

~

            Bill cleaned the bedroom mess as Dipper prepared the spell circle.  Bill occasionally stopped to inspect a cool-looking glue gun or one of Mabel's crayon doodles, but otherwise worked quickly.  Whatever the weird stones had done to him, it was long gone now, leaving him as energetic as ever.

            Dipper carefully placed the last of the beard hair on the floor to complete the circle around the open Journal.  The finished product hardly looked as enchanting as the illustration portrayed, but it would have to do.  Dipper leaned carefully over the circle to read the next step in the Journal.

            “Sprinkle mercury around the unicorn hair and place the moonstones in a triangle encompassing it,” he recited.  Donning a pair of Soos’ old gloves, Dipper snapped the thermometer in half and poured the semi-liquid onto the floor.  He knew he’d have to think of an excuse later for the broken thermometer and stained floorboards.

            “Now the moonstones,” Dipper said, placing them in a large triangle around the white-and-red circle.  It looked somewhat better now, but it was clear that gnome hair was certainly a poor substitute for that of a unicorn.

            Bill finished cleaning just as Dipper began trying to sound out the spell.  He was kneeling over the ring of hair, hands on either side of the Journal.  Reading the Author’s writing was hard enough, but having to avoid disrupting the spell circle made it that much harder.

            “It’s not even in English,” Dipper complained, trying to pronounce the words under his breath.  He didn’t even recognize some of these symbols, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of the language or the handwriting.

            “Hey, Bill,” Dipper called over his shoulder, “could you give this incantation a look?  I’m not having any luck.”

            Bill mimicked Dipper’s position, kneeling outside the circle and placing his hands inside.  Once his fingers brushed the floorboards, he immediately pulled them away, feeling as though the mundane wood had burnt him.  He reflexively stuck his fingers in his mouth, cooling an invisible burn.

            “Bill?” Dipper prompted, glancing over at him.  He made a face at Bill sucking on his hands, but didn't think anything of it.

            “Oh, yeah!” Bill replied cheerfully, leaning over the circle but keeping his hands well away.  He could read this writing no better than he could read English, but the Author’s voice rang in loud and clear.

            “Shahadat jamieia min sahar,” Bill began, merely parroting the deep voice in his head, “baeath alhaya bwast shaeudha—“

            “Wait, you’re going too fast for me,” Dipper interrupted, pressing his hands against his temples.  There was no way he could remember all of that, and making one error in pronunciation could have potentially disastrous results.  “Why don’t _you_ just do the spell?  Think you can say those words in the circle?”

            Bill hesitated, still arched over the spell circle.  His fingers still ached from touching the inside of it.  He wanted to help, but—

            _Don’t you dare, kid,_ the voice commanded, just as strongly this time as it had been before.  Bill remembered how the moonstones had drained his energy and blocked his memory, how sure he'd been that he’d never find his way back…

            But he wasn’t lost now, he was with Dipper.  And Dipper wouldn’t ask him to do something dangerous.  Dipper had rescued him last time, and Bill was sure he could do it again.

            “Sure!” Bill agreed, beaming at Dipper despite the growing intensity of the voice.

              _Just shut up and listen!_

            “Okay, all you have to do is stand in the center of the circle—“

            _Don’t do it don’t do it don’t_

            “—and recite the incantation—“

            _DO IT DON’T DO IT DON’T DO_

            “—got that?”

            Bill hardly heard what Dipper had said, but nodded anyway.  “Yup, I can do it!”

            The moment Bill stepped in the circle, blistering heat began spreading up through his feet.  It felt like they would melt to the floor if he didn’t move them.  But Dipper had worked so hard on this circle, he couldn’t risk messing it up.  Stay in the center, that was what Dipper said to do.

            Nearly shouting over the voice, Bill began the incantation again: “Shahadat jamieia min sahar, baeath alhaya bwast shaeudha—“

            The voice was now hardly a voice at all, the words bleeding into a uniform screech of pain.  Bill shut his eyes, but this did nothing against the sound.  His heart was beating fast, desperate to outpace whatever was coming after it.

            “—Ana uwsikum biha!”

            A quiet series of clicks came from the Journal, the final titters of the dying pages.  Bill’s eyes rolled into his head, and his knees buckled, refusing to uphold its body’s weight any longer.

            “Woah, Bill!” Dipper yelled in surprise as Bill plummeted face-first into the circle.  He tucked his hands into Bill’s armpits and tried to bring him upright, but his legs refused to perform their role.  As Dipper dragged him out of the circle, Bill drew a sharp gasp and looked up.

            “Di’it work?” Bill asked sleepily, his tongue barely moving.

            “Yeah, pretty sure it did,” Dipper laughed.  “You did great, Bill.”

            “Guh,” Bill mumbled, head falling back down to meet his chest.

            “We should probably clean this crud off you,” Dipper said, pulling Bill toward the bathroom.

            The beard hair stuck to Bill's knees was the last of Dipper's worries, but this felt like all he could do at the moment.  Moving out of the bedroom, Dipper kicked a stray moonstone out of the way, watching it bounce harmlessly down the stairs.  All this trouble over some stupid paper.

             _Whatever's going on,_ Dipper thought, jerking Bill through the bedroom door,  _I'm getting to the bottom of it._

**Author's Note:**

> Criticism very much appreciated!


End file.
